Economic benefits of membrane technology vs. evaporator Original Research Article

European Union food ingredients production operations face operating cost challenges. Ingredient production steps frequently incorporate product recovery steps employing centrifugation, rotary vacuum filtration, evaporation and spray drying demanding high energy inputs. Product and process waste streams contain small molecular weight components that can be concentrated, desalted or, in some applications, fractionated with membrane filtration technology. Substantial capital and operating cost benefits together with selective separations can be derived by use of low energy consumption membrane technology as a complete stand alone process step or in conjunction with evaporation enabling product recovery and water for reuse. Reverse osmosis membrane technology can offer greater than 75% reduction in operating cost when compared with 5 multi-effect evaporation with thermal vapour re-compression process. Mechanical vapour recompression evaporators offer the lowest operating cost, similar to membrane technology, but with a considerably higher capital investment. Many companies which employ evaporation as a standard de-watering step in the manufacture of products such as dairy food ingredients, sugars, sweeteners, beverages, organic acids, renewable source bio-fuels, etc., can potentially reduce their carbon foot print with membrane technology.